A flourishing 'industry' exists at the signals and those who engineer and run the 'empire' include gangsters and politicians. Actually, you need to have a strong stomach to absorb the characters depicted in TRAFFIC SIGNAL. This is no glossy, feel-good, escapist cinema that has actors dressed in designer outfits and breaking into songs in the Swiss Alps. The plot is stationed at a traffic signal, the characters are shabby to look at, they wear tattered clothes and the lingo they speak is outright pedestrian, coarse and uncouth. Madhur dares to travel a path no one has traversed in the past. Although TRAFFIC SIGNAL rests on a thin plot, the experience of watching a never-seen-before world is its USP. …

Silsila [Kunal Khemu], a young orphan, who was born and who took his first tiny step at the Signal, is now its manager. For him, the Signal is his workplace and a home where he lives. He loves all those working at the signal, which in a way is his family, but would spare nobody when it comes to business. Silsila's mentor Jaffar [D. Santosh] is the collector of his region. Both Jaffar and Silsila work for the local Mafioso, Haji [Sudhir Mishra]. Inherent in the social structure lies a nexus between the local mafia and politicians, though at that level Silsila is almost non-existent. …

Like PAGE 3, TRAFFIC SIGNAL is about assorted characters. There's a kid called Tsunami, who has lost his parents in the Tsunami. There's a socialite who likes toyboys. There's a girl from Gujarat who sells traditional outfits. There's a hooker who has a soft corner for a drug addict. The drug addict, in turn, has his own story to tell. There's a gay who's part of the flesh trade. And, of course, there's the 'manager' of this traffic signal — the protagonist.

Director Madhur Bhandarkar's choice of the subject is laudable, although one wishes that there were ample dramatic moments in the narrative. Besides, the subject material will have its share of admirers and adversaries. Yet, there's no denying that the film has some brilliant moments. The Ranveer-Konkona track [including Ranveer's sad demise], the entire track of Manoj Joshi [right till his assassination] and the track of a beggar and the rich Gujarati businessman [with a turning point in a multiplex] are superb. From the writing point of view [writers: Sachin Yardi and Madhur Bhandarkar], the penultimate 25 minutes are captivating, but the film ends on an abrupt note. Ideally, there should've been a strong culmination to the tale. ….read more

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